


a thousand sunsets in her arms

by mollivanders



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Baking, Bedsharing, Domestic Fluff, F/F, Mutual Pining, On the Run, Romance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-02 02:19:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17255795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollivanders/pseuds/mollivanders
Summary: It’s surprisingly easy to settle into domestic life with Tahani, of all people. Eleanor would never have supposed it of herself – didn’t see it in the afterlife attempt Michael had shown her – but she can hardly deny that it’s…easy. And comfortable. There’s enough space in the house to never see Tahani if she wanted, but somehow they seem to end up in the same shared spaces, and slowly, Eleanor wishes she’d seen more of this Tahani on Earth.(It’s almost too comfortable; she needs to keep her edge if she’s going to get herself – and the others – through this.)In fact, the only thing that isn’t exactly tailored to them is the single bedroom.





	a thousand sunsets in her arms

**Author's Note:**

  * For [girljustdied](https://archiveofourown.org/users/girljustdied/gifts).



> Filled for a fic-a-thon hosted by girljustdied, for a prompt she left of _“how much easier would your life be if you were indifferent to me?”_. 
> 
> I tried an ending, decided to write more, then this happened. Que sera! Did I add bedsharing? You bet. Did I turn a little fic about Eleanor and Tahani into them being on the run and in hiding together? Of course I did!
> 
> Also, maple butter scones, and sunsets.

“Holy forking shirtballs, we’re in the Good Place.”

As soon as the words leave her mouth, the door to the postal annex slams open and a very hassled-looking attendant gawks at the five of them, lost somewhere between dismay and disbelief.

“ _What_ are you doin’ here?” he boredly asks, his voice high and nasal. Eleanor spots the posh way Tahani wrinkles her nose, just a little. It seems like old habits die hard, even in death.

“Delivery for the Good Place,” Michael says, adding, “I’m their Good Place escort.” He might have done without that second bit because the attendant’s eyes darken with suspicion, taking them in anew.

“There was no escort the last time,” he protests, torn between a sense of duty to his job and bored annoyance, and yanks a binder off the shelf in a huff. Eleanor looks at Michael in a panic just as he says “you don’t need to look at that” to the attendant which is _clearly_ the wrong thing to say in this situation.

(Really, they should have just left the talking to Eleanor.)

But Jason, it seems, is already on it – which is the least chaotic worry she has right now, and that has to be a record.

“Run, everyone!” he yells, and pulls a lighter out of his jacket – how does he even _have_ that here, they _died_ (which she’s still processing, get back to that later) – and lights an entry book on fire, yelling _Bortles!_ at the top of his lungs.

In a sudden panic – fueled by fear and lost memories – they run.

(Somewhere in the chaos, Tahani grabs Eleanor’s hand and leads the way into paradise.)

+

By the time they stopped running, Eleanor has only a vague idea of where they’d started from. The downtown of the actual Good Place looked wasn’t actually much different from the downtown of the Bad Place, according to Michael, except the Good Place had less smog and more trees. There was a train depot running through the center of town, and a museum (with no gift shop, much to Jason’s grief), and also parks, flying horses, and other weird shirt she might have expected if she’d thought about it.

Outside of downtown, according to the maps Janet had _borrowed_ from the planning office, was – nothing. There was absolutely nothing between neighborhoods, which is why the Good Place had a train taking people to neighborhoods – or it would be, if the system wasn’t broken. At first, Michael had wanted to smuggle them into a neighborhood with false identities – classic demon move – before Eleanor had pointed out it was easier to stay hidden in a crowd of strangers, at least until they figured out what they would do.

So they hunker down, and hide.

+

The Good Place, it turns out, was pathetically unprepared for a break-in – let alone one with six Bad Place escapees.

(Five, if they didn’t count their actual Good Place Janet – but these days she was less of a Janet, less of a carry-on, and more something _else_.)

However: the first rule of being on the run, according to Eleanor’s mother, was to check in to the most expensive hotel. That didn’t really _apply_ here, as hotels weren’t so much a thing – everyone who belonged here had their own place, and almost instant inter-dimensional travel made hotels and motels pointless – but there was a really nice area of downtown, which both Michael and Chidi thought they should be running away from.

With Janet’s help though, they suddenly – or technically, their _aliases_ \- lived in a mansion right on the river’s nicest edge.

“Can we modify this?” Tahani asks Janet hopefully, looking around.

“Internal modifications should be fine,” Janet says and quickly snaps her fingers, making Tahani’s jaw drop.

“This is what the inside of your mansion in the first attempt looked like, according to Michael’s blueprints,” she explains as Tahani walks in a circle, staring up at the ceiling.

“I love it,” Tahani whispers in awe, doing another circle before fleeing upstairs to claim a wing of the mansion.

(Somehow, they all manage to feign surprise.)

+

However, it also turned out – hardly to Eleanor’s surprise – that Tahani was equally bad at hiding out or coming up with a plan on evading Good Place security, and consequently Janet kept popping her back indoors from the nearby fashion district or a boulangerie.

“You are so bad at this!” Eleanor exclaimed on the third escape, and Tahani shrugged. “I can’t be cooped up forever, Eleanor.”

“That is _literally_ what the Bad Place will do to you if you keep going outside,” Chidi said from the dining table, philosophy texts spread across the surface. He was coping as only he knew how, but the pit in Eleanor’s stomach said it all – _the past is the past_. If escaping to the Good Place had taught her anything, it was that she couldn’t hold on to what had come before, when she’d literally lost everything from all her lives. “And all of us, if they catch you,” he continued, and she looked away.

“We have our rock-solid aliases, which, thanks, Janet,” Eleanor says in the group meeting after Tahani’s incidental-not-accidental third escape. “But I don’t think staying in the central Good Place is going to work. Tahani needs space to stretch those long legs, and the longer Jason is cooped up, the more likely this place is to end up on fire.”

Jason shrugged, not disagreeing, not exactly admitting anything.

“What we need to do,” Eleanor mused, “is cheat.” She turned to Michael. “Can you steal a neighborhood?”

“ _Eleanor_ ,” Michael gaped, “you said it would be a bad idea to go into a neighborhood because you’d stand out more.”

“Sure,” she agreed, “If we take one with people already in it. The Good Place hasn’t had anyone show up for five centuries; are all the neighborhoods full? Do they have spare neighborhoods? Is that a thing? I don’t know, I’m new here.”

“Actually, no!” volunteered Janet, and Chidi put his head down in his books. “They are not! In fact, there are seven unoccupied neighborhoods within the first Human Zone!”

(Human Zone? Process that later.)

“Sounds like the Good Place wasn’t expecting a soul drought,” Michael mused, and Eleanor nodded.

“Exactly. So we take neighborhoods in between – not the closest, not the furthest away, not nearby in case one neighborhood gets blown – and Janet can let us know how we can help until we’re back together, right?”

Chidi’s face twisted in pain and she instantly felt bad for him, but – they were sort of stuck. They needed a plan, and the longer they stayed here, the better their chances of getting caught.

“Don’t worry, man,” she said, trying to sound soothing – she didn’t have a lot of practice it with it but she was trying! – “when the system is rigged, the only right answer is to cheat.”

“You studied philosophy for a _year_ , Eleanor,” he says in despair and Jason slings an arm around his shoulders.

“Think about it this way,” Jason says, and nods sagely in a way that distinctly worries Eleanor. “Now that we’re dead again, philosophy doesn’t matter!”

In the end, they leave Chidi to his books and a nice cup of almond milk.

(He does, she notes, seem calmer and almost even happy after that.)

Maybe with this, she can leave the past behind.

+

There were occasional patrols out looking for them, but the Good Place was both ill-prepared for a break-in and over-prepared with lots and lots of layers of paperwork. All they did really know, thanks to the Accountants, was their count. If the Good Place cops were looking for four humans and a demon, the easiest solution was to change that mix of people while Michael and Janet kept working on the problem. Best of all, Janet could be called by any of them and technically _belonged_ in the Good Place. It was the perfect cover.

“Don’t get caught,” Eleanor says in a round of hugs. “I want to see you all again.” They’re parting in a frozen yogurt shop and Michael looks strangely nostalgic. She doesn’t ask.

(No more of the past, she’s decided – and she’s sticking to it. Always and only forward.)

+

Their new neighborhood didn’t have much in it; apparently houses were tailored to their occupants and nobody was expecting them (naturally). Still, Janet sets them up in a little house off the neighborhood’s main road. Per Eleanor’s request, it’s close enough to realize trouble is coming, far enough away to not land in the middle of it immediately, and near the train station.

“If you get into trouble,” Janet says, “before I can come, call your local neighborhood Janet and have her take you to the Medium Place. Remember, I won’t be able to come very often, and we’ve reprogrammed your local Janet to not contact Headquarters, so you’ll be fine.”

Tahani blanches but jots down the information from Janet while Eleanor wanders around the living room.

It’s so _big_.

Okay, maybe not to Tahani, but to Eleanor – it’s the biggest and nicest place she’s ever lived in.

(Not the biggest place she’s ever _seen_ \- but – long story.)

Then again, based on the way Tahani is drinking it all in, maybe it _is_ big and nice to Tahani.

It’s only after their Janet has gone, and they explore the second floor of the house, that they both realize the same thing at the same time.

“Oh,” says Tahani faintly, “there’s only one bed.”

+

Their local Janet doesn’t see the problem.

“I don’t understand,” Local Janet says, tilting her head. “That’s new for me. Anyway. You two have this house together. It’s your house. It was made to your personal preferred specifications.” She pauses. “Do you want to contact the neighborhood Architect?”

It takes all of Eleanor’s faux calm to usher Local Janet away and then to face Tahani as she turns around.

“Well, that’s out,” she says uselessly, and shifts under Tahani’s look. She can’t place it. “I guess we’re stuck?”

“I suppose so,” Tahani agrees, shrugging.

“Look on the bright side,” Eleanor says, looping her arm through Tahani’s, “no house guests.”

“Eleanor,” Tahani says, a thousand suppressed comments in her name – but she doesn’t actually seem unhappy about it at all.

+

It turns out the bed is not _nearly_ as large as it looks.

(Eleanor makes a mental note: find Janet, thank her for everything, ask when they’re maybe getting out of here, and then ask pointedly why there is only _one bed_.)

Briefly, she wonders if Chidi and Jason are in the same boat, but something about the way Janet has looked at Jason makes her think…not.

The first night, Tahani learns that Eleanor is a kicker and a bed hog. She stretches out, taking up as much space as humanly possible, and no matter if that space overlaps with Tahani. It’s hers, by right, and she won’t give it up without a battle, Leggy.

The first thing Eleanor learns is that Tahani snores.

It’s a soft, dainty snore but – it’s still nice to find a flaw.

(A flaw that Eleanor listens to with growing rapt attention, somehow entranced by even Tahani’s _snoring_ , but – )

The second thing they both learn is that Eleanor is the little spoon, and that Tahani is a cuddler – new information to them both.

+

It’s surprisingly easy to settle into domestic life with Tahani, of all people. Eleanor would never have supposed it of herself – didn’t see it in the afterlife attempt Michael had shown her – but she can hardly deny that it’s…easy. And comfortable. There’s enough space in the house to never see Tahani if she wanted, but somehow they seem to end up in the same shared spaces, and slowly, Eleanor wishes she’d seen more of this Tahani on Earth.

(It’s almost too comfortable; she needs to keep her edge if she’s going to get herself – and the others – through this.)

Every morning there’s breakfast, or if she wants to sleep in, there’s lunch, and it’s somehow exactly what she didn’t know she wanted. There’s a fully stocked media center and by fully stocked she means _everything_ she or Tahani would want to watch or listen to. There’s a piano for Tahani to play on, a massive pool, and gardens behind the house which seem bigger than the rest of the neighborhood – good for hiding in on short notice, Eleanor notes – and endless frozen yogurt in the freezer.

“Full Cell Phone Battery,” Eleanor sighs happily, lounging by the pool, and Tahani casts a glance her way. It’s not…annoyed exactly.

(Eleanor can’t quite place it.)

In fact, the only thing that isn’t _exactly_ tailored to them is the single bedroom.

+

It’s definitely taking Michael longer to uncover the Bad Place scheming than Eleanor thought – here it is, the bloody knife with all the evidence! – but she supposed it was a scheme half a millennia in the making. Anyway, they technically had all the time in the universe – at least until they were caught.

Janet’s visits are infrequent but she shows up when she can. The Good Place isn’t giving up on looking for them, but it’s also not putting a lot of effort into it. One side-effect of Janet being a Good Place Janet though is that she can be _tracked_ by the Good Place, and frequent visits to neighborhoods that are supposedly abandoned would only be a red flag. Michael covers up her visits with duplicate and error paperwork – errors and mistakes are apparently his specialty – while Janet tries to cover up his forays into the Good Place architecture. The best Janet can explain it is there’s a strange magic, and they’re struggling with it.

Every time Janet shows up with a new task for them, Eleanor spread files or maps or other research Janet and Michael had collected in front of her and calls to Tahani.

“Come on, help me,” Eleanor says after the third visit, making a space at the table. “It’ll be fun!”

“Eleanor, the fact that you think what qualifies as a _heist_ is ‘fun’ is troubling,” she replies, but there’s still a ghost of a smile as she sat down.

“How much easier would your afterlife be if you were indifferent to me?” Eleanor asks, grinning, and Tahani tosses her hair gracefully.

“Easier, maybe,” Tahani said, “but torture of an entirely less pleasant kind.”

From there, Eleanor feels a shift – holds on to it – and leans in.

(It was becoming different than it was on Earth. It was becoming…distinctly better.)

+

It’s week nine – she thinks, it’s hard to keep track of time here – when Tahani rolls out of bed and doesn’t put on heels with her dress and starts going barefoot around the house.

Two weeks after that, she starts wearing – well – _not_ formal wear around the house. Normal wear.

A week after _that_ , she starts baking maple butter scones by the dozen and Eleanor starts to worry that something is wrong. She can’t ask Local Janet, and their Janet really should only come for emergencies, but when she asks Tahani about it, she only shifts on the couch, laying her head on Eleanor’s shoulder, and hums.

“I never got to relax in life,” she says after Eleanor flipped through three more magazines. “I won’t if I ever go to the Bad Place again. I wanted to see what it was like.”

And maybe it’s the maple butter scones, or the fact that Tahani smells like the freshest flowers in their garden, or the way she fits against Eleanor’s shoulder, but something slips loose in Eleanor and she gives in, playing with the actually epic waves of Tahani’s hair.

“Did Michael ever tell you about Attempt No. 218?” Tahani asks quietly, and Eleanor slides both her hands up, up, up into Tahani’s hair, catches how Tahani tilts into Eleanor’s touch, and suddenly Eleanor is as skittish as a fawn. If Tahani runs – she’ll be all alone – she’ll lose whatever _this_ is, blossoming – and she’d rather go to the Bad Place.

(She shifts closer.)

That’s when Tahani kisses her all at once, the most natural waterfall movement Eleanor’s ever seen, and she falls beneath her just as swiftly.

Her kiss is a sunset, a thousand lights all at once, and the soft protest she makes as Tahani breaks away makes her smile. Eleanor thinks she’s going to die all over again when Tahani’s eyes drop back to Eleanor’s mouth, wetting her lips, and then Eleanor is lost, lost, _lost_ and happily trapped in some fantasy world where Tahani bakes maple butter scones and kisses her until the sun comes up again.

Somewhere in there, she makes a wish.

(She never wants to leave this neighborhood.)

+

Eleanor had, apparently dreamed of this a thousand times more than she remembers, because even if Michael hadn’t spilled the beans on Attempt No. 218 to her, Janet had spilled them at some point to Tahani and – well –

(Her breath comes shorter – faster – higher – catches Tahani’s breath and gives it back to her, tangled in the morning lights and the spill of Tahani’s hair – she’ll die a thousand deaths to live just like this, just here, forever.)

“Dreaming,” Tahani says, tracing patterns on Eleanor’s stomach with her fingertips, “doesn’t come close.”

“Why didn’t we do this on Earth?” Eleanor laughs, squirming away from Tahani’s ticklish touch, and Tahani snorts.

“We are very, very clever, Eleanor,” she says, and Eleanor shifts closer again, wanting. “But we’re also kind of stupid.”

“Fair enough,” Eleanor murmurs, and steals another kiss, linking their hands together.

(At least – she can be very, very clever now.)

+

Their Janet finds them one morning, covered in flour and sugar and maple syrup as Tahani tries, for the probably seventieth time, to show Eleanor how to make the maple butter scones.

“Really, Eleanor, I’ll make all the scones you want,” Tahani insists as Eleanor freezes, a disastrous cloud of flour descending over her face, and Eleanor shakes her head.

“I want to be able to make them for you,” she says, and lets Tahani tilt her chin up for a kiss.

A loud _*boop*_ interrupts them, and Eleanor drops the entire flour bag in alarm.

It had been so _long_ since they’d heard from their Janet.

(Process _that_ later.)

“It seems,” Janet explains a few minutes later, taking them in, “some sort of…spell was broken?”

Eleanor shoots Tahani a look and Tahani shrugs, just as confused. Janet looked back and forth between them, reading them carefully, and then bursts out beaming.

“You two!” she exclaims, latching on to the revelation, and Eleanor shakes her head, trying to understand. “Finally!”

“Janet,” Eleanor asks, “Focus. Does this mean we’re okay? We’re safe?”

+

Technically, no.

(In the end, yes.)

+

With the help of very apologetic Good Place Architects and Michael, neighborhoods were merged. Eleanor wasn’t even sure how long it had been since she’d seen Chidi and Jason, but she didn’t miss the edge of fear in Tahani’s eyes at the group reunion, or the way Michael kept darting his eyes between the four of them.

(Plenty of time for that later.)

“I’d understand,” Tahani says later, in the quiet and safety of their now-really-theirs home, “if you…preferred a different arrangement now. Or wanted to consider it.”

It’s painful to hear her say that, to slip back into the daughter who could never live up to her parents or her sister, and it’s something Eleanor just cannot do.

“Look,” she says, sitting next to Tahani on their favorite couch, “I’m not great with promises. I don’t know if we’re really in the Good Place, or if this is all another big joke that Michael’s playing on us. For all I know, we could get rebooted any second.” Tahani already has her walls up, and it’s – holy forking shirtballs, she wishes she could really swear. She reaches for Tahani’s hands, clasping them in hers.

“But really, Eleanor,” Tahani says, hesitating, “how much easier would your afterlife be if you were indifferent to me? If you just left?”

“Easier, maybe,” says Eleanor, and drops a kiss on Tahani’s hand. “But torture of an entirely less pleasant kind.”

(Tahani’s smile – her answer – is a thousand sunsets all at once.)

+

That night – the first night they really have their real Good Place – is the night Eleanor gets the maple butter scone recipe right.

(It’s a magic of its own kind.)

_Finis_


End file.
